Dead apps an enterprise risk

It happens to all of us – there’s an app you like but after some time the developer either abandons the app or they stop updating it, having replaced it with something new. Evernote did it recently when they decommissioned their incredibly handy Hello app, Filemaker did it with Bento and thousands of smaller developers have done it.

Security company Appthority has released their most recent security report [PDF link, requires you enter an email address]. They say “dead apps” are “the biggest risk to the Enterprise”.

Their research has found almost 43% of apps are either stale (where the version of the app in the app store is newer than the version deployed on user devices) or dead (the app has been removed from the App Store but remains on a user device). They looked at a collection of over 3 million apps and how these apps were being consumed in enterprise environments.

They have found Android dominates overall market share of the world’s consumer smartphones but Apple’s iOS overwhelmingly dominates the enterprise market share at 85% of employee devices. One reason for this is possibly a perception Android is less safe according to Appthority.